A few weeks ago, after watching X-men 3, I suddenly developed a sudden nostalgia for all the cartoons shows I used to watch as a child. Specifically X-men, Beast Wars and Transformers Generations 1.

I got copies of them from various friends and proceeded to re-live my childhood, my how long it's been yet how easily it was to get to love and appreciate those shows again. I never noticed how adult in places Beast Wars was, how well they let the characters develop unlike Transformers where there were just too many bots to keep track off. Restricting it down to 6 characters per season (roughly) really helped develop the individual personas and conflicts. Dinobot and Rat Trap and the forever hilarious Wazpinator (who I realized gets shot, destroyed, crashed, blown up in just about every episode. An added bonus was noticing how the early CGI graphics got better and better over time, the first episode they could even do water or water reflections but overcame that in latter seasons.

However Transformers G1 is still great, just because its a show I remember loving as a kid. I watched the movie again, never realized what high caliber voice acting they got for it, Orson Welles as Unicron (Citizen Kane), Leonard Nimoy as Glavatron (Spock) and Eric Idle as Wrak-gar (Monty Python). It was enjoyable, however the music was just plain terrible... high pitched male vocals going "You got the power!!!" with synthesized backing... Ahhh it was too much to bear. I just watched a few episodes of the new Transformers: Cybertron, and I have to say that the Gonzo inspired CGI is perhaps the best I have seen so far... not to mention that the story is the best since Beast Wars and G1.

X-men was far different, it's the story that binds it together. Though it's much more different then the movies, I liked the characters of the cartoons actually. Wolverine was wilder, Rouge was a southern belle and way hotter looking then Anna Paquin (I know this sounds wrong) and of course there is Gambit. Who is by far my fav. X-men yet never got featured in any of the movies.

To me what’s most intriguing is the stylistic change. Transformers G1 and its movie were incredibly fast paced, something was always going on, and there was never breathing room. X-men is a further development of that. The action always took precedence over other aspects. Beast Wars is a bit more cinematic, there is more breathing room, and more focus on characterization. Dino bot probably has the best story arc, and is my favorite character there. You can spot various movie plot lines being nixed and adopted, which makes the show a more family based affair rather then just for kids.

This of course brings us up to the current level, watching those before it's easy to see how it's still enjoyable for me to watch cartoons. Though the series are far more adult now, more anime. The best examples would be Tri-gun, Neon Genesis Evangalion, Full Metal Alchemist, Akira and the most adult based I believe Ghost in the Shell series. In GS, its not hard to see the creators were shooting for a very cinematic, very adult and ultra cool niche. It's shown in the series' adult language discussing everything from inter-governmental corruption, the problem of cybernetic enhancement and the meaning of humanity in a digital world.

Anybody have their own comments? Any series you remember fondly? Pitch in.

Itachi

Out of all those my favorite will always be beast wars i dont know why but beast wars was and always will be one of my favorite.

~Itachi

Tac-Tics

You mispelled Unicron! What kind of fan would ever do that!???

The Transformer's Movie is my favorite movie of all time. I have watched it hundreds of times, and I used to be able to recite the lines and musical score from memory. Seriously, Unicron is the coolest transformer ever. He was so tough, he even killed Orson Welles!! Though, I never saw the full episode... and the ~5 minute clip I saw was dubbed in Japanese without subtitles, I absolutely loved the episode of Beast Wars where the aliens took the form of Unicron. Optimus Primal looked as though he was going to cr~p his robotic pants!

PS - How old are you to have seen Beast Wars in your childhood? Am I really that old?

TF is good stuff.

Farhad

Misspelled Unicron by prime that is impossible... your optic sensors must be malfunctioning.

I watched Beast Wars when I was 11 to 12.

Yeah that part in Beast Wars was amazing, I had the full DVDs of Seasons 1 to 3 of Beast Wars, and included with it was intreviews with Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio and they talked about how the whole arc of connecting Beast Wars with Transformers G1 was a coincidence and they never had it planned out and just did by the seat of their pants.

Who were your favourtie characters in Beast Wars. I would take Dinobot from the Maximals and Scorponok for the Predecons. And I never did like the Fuzor or S2 post cleansing forms of Optimus...